Do Libertarians Really "Want a World Without Moral Judgments"?

Reason ^ | 03/22/2013 | Nick Gillespie

[JustSayNoToNannies]

The libertarians sure push for their drugs and free sex, but all the conservative stuff, privatizing the schools, never gets a mention it seems.

Wrong as usual:

"2.8 Education

"Education is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality, accountability and efficiency with more diversity of choice. Recognizing that the education of children is a parental responsibility, we would restore authority to parents to determine the education of their children, without interference from government. Parents should have control of and responsibility for all funds expended for their children's education." - http://www.lp.org/platform

That’s the upper-case L libertarians.

Not them either - like the lower-casers they simply 'favor the repeal of all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes' (from the link above).

[cradle of freedom]

Coca Cola once had cocaine because it was thought to be a harmless pick-me-up.

[JustSayNoToNannies]

back about a hundred years ago opiates and cocaine were legal because the harmful effects were not know

False, as documented below:

'The nonmedicinal use of opiates, while legal in both the United States and England, was not considered respectable. Indeed, as an anonymous but perceptive and well-informed American writer noted in the Catholic World for September 1881, it was as disreputable as drinking alcoholic beverages--- and much harder to detect:

'The gentleman who would not be seen in a bar-room, however respectable, or who would not purchase liquor and use it at home, lest the odor might be detected upon his person, procures his supply of morphia and has it in his pocket ready for instantaneous use. It is odorless and occupies but little space. . . . He zealously guards his secret from his nearest friend--- for popular wisdom has branded as a disgrace that which he regards as a misfortune. . .

'Opiate use was also frowned upon in some circles as immoral--- a vice akin to dancing, smoking, theater-going, gambling, or sexual promiscuity. [...]

'Our nineteenth-century forbears correctly perceived the major objection to the opiates. They are addicting. Though the word "addiction" was seldom used during the nineteenth century, the phenomenon was well understood. The true nature of the narcotic evil becomes visible, the Catholic World article pointed out, when someone who has been using an opiate for some time attempts to give up its use. Suddenly his eyes are opened to his folly and he realizes the startling fact that he is in the coils of a serpent as merciless as the boa-constrictor and as relentless as fate. [...]

'Nevertheless, there was very little popular support for a law banning these substances. "Powerful organizations for the suppression ... of alcoholic stimulants exist throughout the land," the 1881 article in the Catholic World noted, but there were no similar anti-opiate organizations.

'The reason for this lack of demand for opiate prohibition was quite simple: the drugs were not viewed as a menace to society'

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cu1.html